Latest Articles

TV vs. Computer: The energy use showdown

Given a choice between spending an hour watching TV or surfing the Internet, which should you choose, assuming, of course, that your goal is not entertainment but consuming the least energy possible? This handy graphic provides the answer: It's surfing the Internet: At .09 kilowatt-hours per hour, your computer consumes the least energy of any […]

McCaskill defends vote to hurt sick kids by saying the League of Women Voters are ‘bad guys’

Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), after a recent vote to protect coal polluters at the expense of children’s health, is now attacking the League of Women Voters. The 91-year-old good-government organization is running television spots that hold McCaskill and Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) accountable for voting to block enforcement of Clean […]

Socolow reaffirms 2004 ‘wedges’ paper, urges aggressive low-carbon deployment ASAP

This is a wedge issue.In 2004, Princeton professors Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala published a paper in Science, “Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies” [PDF]. The abstract read: Humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical, and industrial know-how to solve the carbon and climate problem for the […]

Fracking with our food: how gas drilling affects farming

Photo: Gilt Taste This story originally appeared on Gilt Taste. There’s a stunning moment in the Academy Award-nominated documentary Gasland, where a man touches a match to his running faucet — to have it explode in a ball of fire. This is what hydraulic fracturing, a process of drilling for natural gas known as “fracking,” […]

The man who thinks Manhattan isn’t dense enough

New York City may not be the best example of a place that hasn’t lived up to its potential for greater density.Photo: Randy von LiskiCross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. New York County, which comprises all of Manhattan, is the densest county in America at 71,166 people per square mile. It is twice as […]

It’s official: Massey’s negligence killed 29 miners

A year after the deadly blast at the Massey-owned Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, it's official: The disaster was Massey's fault. I'm not sure what the team of independent investigators thought they were going to find — vengeful sprites? A cursed sarcophagus? Workers deliberately blowing themselves up for funsies? — but they found […]

Me, talking politics and oil subsidies [VIDEO]

Yesterday, I was on The Alyona Show, a sharp public affairs talk show run, oddly enough, by Russia Today. The topic was the politics around oil subsidies. Here’s the clip: I don’t have a ton to add, but here’s one point I was pondering on the bus this morning. You often hear people (like me!) […]

Fat city: The way your neighborhood is built could be killing you

Road to ruin.Photo: Alfonso SurrocaCrappy urban development isn’t just ugly and noisy and dirty. It is turning out to be lethal. One Toronto study looked at how the quality of a community’s streets can affect people’s health, factoring into drastically reduced life expectancy. It’s the focus of an article in The Globe and Mail that […]

Species are going extinct, but how quickly?

Species are going extinct at an alarming rate, and shrinking habitats are an important factor. Everyone agrees on that. But scientists don't agree about exactly how quickly species are disappearing and how they can craft mathematical models to predict that rate. A new study in Nature claims that the mathematical formula that the scientific community […]

Will gas prices turn America into Europe?

If you thought driving sporty little fuel-efficient vehicles and living a reasonable distance from work was strictly an affectation of Continentals who kiss their ladies down there, we've got news for you: Turns out these behaviors can be induced in any population, whatever the likelihood that its colors will run, simply by increasing the cost […]